Karen Allen was absolutely my first crush. I remember watching Raiders of the Lost Ark as a little kid and thinking that I liked her differently somehow, even though I wasn’t sure what that meant. And why shouldn’t I have liked her? She’s a badass in that movie. She wins a drinking contest by feigning to be drunk, she fights the bad guys in the streets of Egypt with a frying pan, she manipulates Belloq so she can escape, she mans the machine gun in the airplane, and she punches Indiana Jones in the face because he was a jerk to her in the past. And she’s very pretty with a hell of a smile. In terms of first crushes, I could have done a lot worse.
Some men out there are into women that they can control. They want a pet who will always look good and always defer to whatever the man wants. Other men want a woman who will take care of them and tell them what to do. Neither of those types of relationships has ever been for me. As long as I can remember, I wanted a partner. I wanted to meet a woman with a strong sense of self and I wanted a relationship in which we both challenge each other to be our best selves. Luckily, I got what I wanted.
